Custom Linux bootable CD

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My machine, on which I am doing all these steps / building the Custom CENTOS CD, is named kworkhorse, but will be referred to as the role <b><i>buildhost</i></b> in this text. It runs Fedora 11 64 bit.  
My machine, on which I am doing all these steps / building the Custom CENTOS CD, is named kworkhorse, but will be referred to as the role <b><i>buildhost</i></b> in this text. It runs Fedora 11 64 bit.  
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I have a directory <b>/data/cdimages</b>, which contains full install tree of original CENTOS 5.4 64 bit CD in <b>CENTOS-5.4-x86_64</b>, and an empty <b>CENTOS-5.4-x86_64-core</b> (build) directory. The directory layout looks like the following:
+
I have a directory <b>/data/cdimages</b>, which contains full install tree of original CENTOS 5.4 64 bit CD in <b>CENTOS-5.4-x86_64</b> subdirectory, and an empty <b>CENTOS-5.4-x86_64-core</b> (build) directory. The directory layout looks like the following:
<pre>
<pre>

Revision as of 18:31, 29 June 2010

This article is in relation to the article CENTOS Server CD project , and is "heavily" based on http://people.redhat.com/rkeech/custom-distro.txt . So here it goes.

First, the setup

My machine, on which I am doing all these steps / building the Custom CENTOS CD, is named kworkhorse, but will be referred to as the role buildhost in this text. It runs Fedora 11 64 bit.

I have a directory /data/cdimages, which contains full install tree of original CENTOS 5.4 64 bit CD in CENTOS-5.4-x86_64 subdirectory, and an empty CENTOS-5.4-x86_64-core (build) directory. The directory layout looks like the following:


[root@kworkhorse cdimages]# pwd
/data/cdimages

[root@kworkhorse cdimages]# tree -d
.
├── CentOS-5.4-x86_64
│   ├── CentOS
│   ├── images
│   │   ├── pxeboot
│   │   └── xen
│   ├── isolinux
│   ├── NOTES
│   └── repodata
└── CentOS-5.4-x86_64-core

[root@kworkhorse cdimages]# 

The directory /data/cdimages/CentOS-5.4-x86_64-core (which is empty at the moment), will be the custom install tree, and referred to as $RHROOT in this document.

Required Packages on the build host

Before you continue, you must install the following packages on your base OS.

yum -y install anaconda anaconda-runtime mkisofs cdrecord

Note: anaconda-runtime is RHEL/CENTOS specific package, and is part of the RHEL/CENTOS distribution. As evident below:

[kamran@kworkhorse CentOS]$ ls /data/cdimages/CentOS-5.4-x86_64/CentOS/anaconda-* -1
anaconda-11.1.2.195-1.el5.centos.x86_64.rpm
anaconda-runtime-11.1.2.195-1.el5.centos.x86_64.rpm
[kamran@kworkhorse CentOS]$ 

This package "anaconda-runtime" provides the following packages:

[kamran@kworkhorse CentOS]$ rpm -qpl anaconda-runtime-11.1.2.195-1.el5.centos.x86_64.rpm
. . . 
/usr/lib/anaconda-runtime
/usr/lib/anaconda-runtime/boot
/usr/lib/anaconda-runtime/boot/boot.msg
/usr/lib/anaconda-runtime/boot/general.msg
/usr/lib/anaconda-runtime/boot/options.msg
/usr/lib/anaconda-runtime/boot/param.msg
/usr/lib/anaconda-runtime/boot/rescue.msg
/usr/lib/anaconda-runtime/boot/syslinux.cfg
/usr/lib/anaconda-runtime/buildinstall
/usr/lib/anaconda-runtime/checkisomd5
/usr/lib/anaconda-runtime/filtermoddeps
/usr/lib/anaconda-runtime/fixmtime.py
/usr/lib/anaconda-runtime/fixmtime.pyc
/usr/lib/anaconda-runtime/fixmtime.pyo
/usr/lib/anaconda-runtime/getkeymaps
/usr/lib/anaconda-runtime/implantisomd5
/usr/lib/anaconda-runtime/keymaps-override-x86_64
/usr/lib/anaconda-runtime/libunicode-lite.so.1
/usr/lib/anaconda-runtime/loader
/usr/lib/anaconda-runtime/loader/init
/usr/lib/anaconda-runtime/loader/loader
/usr/lib/anaconda-runtime/loader/loader.tr
/usr/lib/anaconda-runtime/loader/module-info
/usr/lib/anaconda-runtime/loader/unicode-linedraw-chars.txt
/usr/lib/anaconda-runtime/makestamp.py
/usr/lib/anaconda-runtime/makestamp.pyc
/usr/lib/anaconda-runtime/makestamp.pyo
/usr/lib/anaconda-runtime/maketreeinfo.py
/usr/lib/anaconda-runtime/maketreeinfo.pyc
/usr/lib/anaconda-runtime/maketreeinfo.pyo
/usr/lib/anaconda-runtime/mapshdr
/usr/lib/anaconda-runtime/mk-images
/usr/lib/anaconda-runtime/mk-images.ia64
/usr/lib/anaconda-runtime/mk-images.ppc
/usr/lib/anaconda-runtime/mk-images.s390
/usr/lib/anaconda-runtime/mk-images.x86
/usr/lib/anaconda-runtime/mk-rescueimage.i386
/usr/lib/anaconda-runtime/mk-rescueimage.ppc
/usr/lib/anaconda-runtime/mk-rescueimage.x86_64
/usr/lib/anaconda-runtime/moddeps
/usr/lib/anaconda-runtime/modlist
/usr/lib/anaconda-runtime/pkgorder
/usr/lib/anaconda-runtime/pyisomd5sum.so
/usr/lib/anaconda-runtime/pyrc.py
/usr/lib/anaconda-runtime/pyrc.pyc
/usr/lib/anaconda-runtime/pyrc.pyo
/usr/lib/anaconda-runtime/readmap
/usr/lib/anaconda-runtime/screenfont-x86_64.gz
/usr/lib/anaconda-runtime/scrubtree
/usr/lib/anaconda-runtime/splittree.py
/usr/lib/anaconda-runtime/splittree.pyc
/usr/lib/anaconda-runtime/splittree.pyo
/usr/lib/anaconda-runtime/trimmodalias
/usr/lib/anaconda-runtime/trimpciids
/usr/lib/anaconda-runtime/upd-instroot
/usr/lib/anaconda-runtime/yumcache
. . . 
[kamran@kworkhorse CentOS]$ 


If you are using Fedora, you may not find anaconda-runtime. Instead anaconda and anaconda-runtime are merged into single package, which provides the same functionality :

[root@kworkhorse cdimages]# rpm -ql anaconda  | grep runtime
. . . 
/usr/lib/anaconda-runtime
/usr/lib/anaconda-runtime/boot
/usr/lib/anaconda-runtime/boot/boot.msg
/usr/lib/anaconda-runtime/boot/grub.conf
/usr/lib/anaconda-runtime/boot/syslinux.cfg
/usr/lib/anaconda-runtime/buildinstall
/usr/lib/anaconda-runtime/buildinstall.functions
/usr/lib/anaconda-runtime/genmodinfo
/usr/lib/anaconda-runtime/getkeymaps
/usr/lib/anaconda-runtime/keymaps-override-x86_64
/usr/lib/anaconda-runtime/loader
/usr/lib/anaconda-runtime/loader/init
/usr/lib/anaconda-runtime/loader/loader
/usr/lib/anaconda-runtime/loader/loader.tr
/usr/lib/anaconda-runtime/loader/unicode-linedraw-chars.txt
/usr/lib/anaconda-runtime/makestamp.py
/usr/lib/anaconda-runtime/makestamp.pyc
/usr/lib/anaconda-runtime/makestamp.pyo
/usr/lib/anaconda-runtime/maketreeinfo.py
/usr/lib/anaconda-runtime/maketreeinfo.pyc
/usr/lib/anaconda-runtime/maketreeinfo.pyo
/usr/lib/anaconda-runtime/mapshdr
/usr/lib/anaconda-runtime/mk-images
/usr/lib/anaconda-runtime/mk-images.alpha
/usr/lib/anaconda-runtime/mk-images.efi
/usr/lib/anaconda-runtime/mk-images.ia64
/usr/lib/anaconda-runtime/mk-images.ppc
/usr/lib/anaconda-runtime/mk-images.s390
/usr/lib/anaconda-runtime/mk-images.x86
/usr/lib/anaconda-runtime/modlist
/usr/lib/anaconda-runtime/pyrc.py
/usr/lib/anaconda-runtime/pyrc.pyc
/usr/lib/anaconda-runtime/pyrc.pyo
/usr/lib/anaconda-runtime/readmap
/usr/lib/anaconda-runtime/screenfont-x86_64.gz
/usr/lib/anaconda-runtime/scrubtree
/usr/lib/anaconda-runtime/trimpciids
/usr/lib/anaconda-runtime/upd-instroot
/usr/lib/anaconda-runtime/upd-updates
. . . 
[root@kworkhorse cdimages]# 

The environment variables

Quote from the original Howto: Many of the scripts provided in these packages are Python scripts. For them to work properly the PYTHONPATH variable must be set to /usr/lib/anaconda and be exported in the shell environment in which the commands are run. Many of the scripts are from the directory /usr/lib/anaconda-runtime, so either put this in the PATH or provide an absolute path to commands.

So, you should setup the necessary environment variables. I would advise you to add the following two lines to your ~/.bash_profile, so each time you open a terminal, these values are set.

export RHROOT=/data/cdimages/CentOS-5.4-x86_64-core
export PYTHONPATH=/usr/lib/anaconda
export PATH=$PATH:/usr/lib/anaconda-runtime

Note: It is important to note, that even on a 64 bit system (as I have), these two paths are /usr/lib/anaconda and /usr/lib/anacoda-runtime. i.e. These two directories does not exist in /usr/lib64.

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